Fiasco total: El crucero de la caca

The Trainwreck series of Netflix documentaries has one underlying theme: Americans, if given free reign, can be as crass and depraved as anything featured in the notorious Penthouse-produced movie Caligula. As an American, I watch these documentaries with a mix of fascination and shock. If we still had a mental health care program in the United States, most of the people featured in these documentaries would probably wind up in wards.

This documentary's title is off putting, juvenile and like something from a National Enquirer tabloid headline. But I watched it anyway for the hell of it. At only an hour, it's not a long time investment. And it has its merits. The recreation of the bad conditions on the ship are engrossing. The most revealing interviews come from the staff of the Carnival ship - mainly Jen the "Julie McCoy" of the cruise, and the chef originally from India (I can't recall his name). An executive from Carnival is interviewed too, which is a surprise. Of course in typical executive form, he is mostly unapologetic, claims the "media" blew the disaster out of proportion (the horrible "fake news" media strikes again...), and all Carnival liners are subjected to rigorous inspections before they launch.

On the other side of the executive perspective, there are interviews with a maritime attorney who specializes in cases against luxury cruise ships. He reveals that at the time, all ticket purchasers of Carnival cruise lines had to agree to a clause, likely in very small print buried on page 5 of the text-heavy application, that passengers are basically on their own in the case of a disaster at sea...anything apparently from hitting an iceberg to a fire that causes the power to go and all of the toilets to stop working.

Thus, the "poop" angle of the documentary. Most passengers interviewed freaked out at the thought of (OMG) doing "number 2" in a red biohazard bag. It's not as if the ship had a shortage of biohazard canisters or toilet paper. So thus begins the American entitlement reveal. Three young women are interviewed prominently. Their only objective on the bachelorette party/cruise is to drink, day and night. They need to take an expensive cruise just to do THAT? They could have saved a ton of money by just spending a long weekend at a hotel next door to an Applebee's.

Other passengers include a young guy who traveled with his fiancé and her father, who seems to be auditioning for a movie most of the time. Besides the two Carnival staff interviewed, perhaps the most sympathetic subjects are a father and daughter duo from Lubbock, TX. But at the time the daughter was 13, and why the hell dad that it was a good idea to "relax" with her daughter (who was 13 at the time) on such a decadent cruise is anyone's guess.

Maybe this is being too critical of the subjects being interviewed. They experienced a horrible ordeal with at one time no end in sight. But whoever at Carnival made the decision to offer free alcohol on the third day of being stranded to these most likely sleep- and nutrition-deprived, hungry, frustrated, and delirious passengers should have his or her head examined. If they wanted total Roman Empire violence, sex, and debauchery, they sure got it, before a wiser employee shut the bar down.

The takeaway from all of this, for me at least, is that if I ever have an itch to take a cruise, it will be on a paddleboat on the Mississippi River. At least then, if anything goes haywire, we can swim to shore.

They say it's not nice to laugh at other people's misfortunes, but sorry, I couldn't help but laugh.

In February 2013, everything was going fine on the Carnival Triumph luxury cruise ship until day four, when a fire knocked out the ship's electricity. This, in turn, disabled the toilets, leaving passengers with the option to do number ones in the shower and number twos in a red poop bag.

Most of the food had to be thrown away, thanks to no refrigeration, leaving passengers with crappy, unappealing sandwiches and not much else. A plan to give passengers free drinks didn't go well, as it seems drunk passengers on a broken cruise ship stuck in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico was a recipe for yet more disaster.

This is just day one; it gets worse, much worse. I felt bad for laughing, but I couldn't help it.

Eventually, the media got a whiff of the story, which is much better for them than the whiff of pee and poop being endured by the poor passengers and crew of the Carnival Triumph.

It turns out there were plenty of warning signs that this could happen. There had been several fires on Carnival's ships, and this fire was caused by a leak in a diesel engine's flexible fuel oil return line that spilt onto a hot surface and ignited. This was not the fault of the crew, who came across as guardian angels, thus saving Carnival Cruise Line a little bit of face, but not much.

This is the third of the Netflix Trainwreck series I've seen, and probably the best so far. Thankfully, nobody died in this disaster, but anyone watching will surely be glad they were not on that boat.

Omgosh a lot of the people who attended the cruise for fun are people I would hate to hangout with. The people who couldnt handle the begining of the problems like poo in the bag and number one in the shower when it wasnt stinky. Are so lame.

Yall never went camping. You guys are not lasting if goverment went down and structures started failing.

I had such a annoyance at those who couldnt handle and complained at the minor indecency.

And to the dude who wanted to hold in and not poo in a bag, could of actually created a health emergency not from bad hygenic outer conditions but because that can come out his mouth.

The documentry itself is kind of funny, love the news coming out, the aftermath, and the crew were the greatest.

4,000 passengers set off on board a luxury carnival cruise ship, but on the return journey, the power fails after a fire in an engine room, and chaos ensues.

I can understand why they decided to focus on the 'poop' angle; it's pure clickbait. I get that it's a grim part of the story, but come on, it's a little juvenile. I can imagine twelve-year-olds giggling about it.

The interesting side of it isn't the whole poop angle, but the human nature aspect-seeing people splinter off into factions, with primal instincts coming through. Why on Earth did the people in charge think that opening the free bar would be a good idea? Who could possibly have thought that giving stressed-out, bunged-up people free booze was the right thing to do?

Credit to the staff on board that ship; they seemed to come away from this with a bit of dignity. Carnival's disclaimer was something special; can you imagine? Human nature is always interesting to witness, so from that point of view, it's watchable.

6/10.

It is a fairly short documentary that is fun to watch. Well, fun if you like laughing at other people's misfortune.

What struck me is the incredible sense of entitlement of the passengers (at least those being interviewed). Oh, the HORROR of having to poop in a biohazard bag! Really, is it that bad, under the circumstances? They were reacting to the red bag suggestion as if they were told to perform surgery on each other without anesthesia.

Hannah, the crew member, could not have possibly grown up in the Soviet Union, just based on her age. Her knowledge about the country comes from the same sources as fairy tales about bears on the streets playing balalaikas. I did grow up in the SU, and I have never heard nor experienced disasters similar to that cruise ship, where people hoard food, fight each other for sleeping places, and generally everyone is out for themselves. On the contrary, this kind of experience would have been handled differently, the crew would have been rationing food (one sandwich per person), and the passengers would have been much more disciplined and would have banded together.